Final Exam Study Guide:

Be prepared to do the following tasks or answer the following questions:

1. Identify the prophetic book from which a quotation is drawn. You will want to prepare for this task by making a chart that identifies key themes, words, historical contexts, audiences, and messages associated with each prophet.

2. Explore specific questions about specific books? Not all of the following will appear on the exam. You will be given a selection from which to choice.

a. Describe the criteria for true prophecy and explain how knowledge of this criteria helps one read stories in 1 Kings.

b. Describe how specific kings in the Deuteronomic narrative demonstrate a false understanding of prophecy.

c. What role does lament play in the prophetic literature?

d. Explain how Ezekiel's vision of the heavenly throne can be read as a theology.

e. Explain how Deutero-Isaiah's divine imagery serves to reconcile a transcendent theology with the notion of a God who acts in history and has a personal relation with a people?

f. What do the suffering servant psalms teach us about the nature of discipleship? Why is it important to understand them in the context of the narrative frame of chapters 40 and 55?

g. Explain why understanding the Sitz im Leben of a text or passage can lead us to a more meaningful interpretation.

h. Explain what Alan Cooper means when he says that the book of Jonah gives common sense a battering in order to demonstrate God's divine freedom.

i. In what ways do Daniel and Zechariah preach a message of persistence and peace.

j. Describe the plot line that helps us put Jeremiah's complaining into a theological or meaningful context?

k. Compare the notion of remnant in the prophecies of Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel

l. Why does prophecy come to an end? Delineate the scriptural basis for this conclusion.

m. Explain how various prophets use the metaphor of marriage to describe the covenant relationship of God and Israel.

n. Discuss how the notion of idolatry changes as one moves from the pre-exilic prophets to the post-exilic prophets.

o. Compare the vision of the temple in First Isaiah to that of Ezekiel. What role does the temple play in each?

p. Describe the Deuteronomic ethic upon which many prophets based their indictments against Israel and Judah. Provide explicit examples of indictments.

q. Explain why it is important to read a prophetic work in its entirety. Give examples where selective readings of passages can lead to misinterpretation of the prophet.

r. Pick a theme from the book of Amos (social justice, political unity, creation theology, shalom, covenant) and discuss how this particular theme would lend itself to a vision of the way "things ought to be".

s. Would you place Amos in the tradition of creation theology, covenant theology or shalom theology? Explain your reason(s) for either choice.

Here is a pretest of the identification question (taken from the 1998 exam). Do the test and then check your results to see how prepared you are for the final.

A. Identify the prophetic works in which the following quotations appear and briefly describe the key identifying feature (30 points):

1. He shall judge between many peoples,

and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;

they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more;

but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,

and no one shall make them afraid.... ____________________

 

2. Beat your plowshares into swords

and your pruning hooks into spears

let the weakling say, "I am a warrior."

_________________________

 

3. Be appalled, O heavens, at this,

be shocked, be utterly

desolate,

says the Lord,

for my people have committed

two evils

they have forsaken me,

the fountain of living water,

and dug out cisterns for themselves

cracked cisterns

that can hold no water. ____________________________

 

4. On that day, says the Lord of Hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more, and also I will remove from the land the prophets and the unclean spirit. And if any prophets appear again, their fathers and mothers who

bore them will say to them, "You shall not live, for you speak lies in the name

of the Lord", and their fathers and their mothers who bore them

shall pierce them through when they prophesy. __________________________________

 

5 . A voice cries out:

"In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up

and every mountain and hill made low; ...."

A voice says, "Cry out!" And I said, "What shall I cry?"

All people are grass,

their constancy is like the flower of the field. ________________________________

 

6. Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses,

while this house lies in ruins.... Go up to the hills and bring wood

and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored. __________________________

 

7. You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?

_______________________________

 

8. On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, "My husband," and no longer will you call me, "My Ba'al." For I will remove the names of the Ba'als from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more, I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds

of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword

and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety.

______________________________

 

9. His way is in whirlwind and storm,

and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

He rebukes the sea and makes it cry,

and he dries up all the rivers;

Bashan and Carmel wither,

and the bloom of Lebanon fades.

The mountains quake before him,

and the hills melt;

and earth heaves before him,

the world and all who live in it. _______________________________

 

 

10. Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.

________________________________

 

11. I will bring such distress upon people

that they shall walk like the blind;

because they have sinned against the Lord,

their blood shall be poured out like dust,

and their flesh like dung.

Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them

on the day of the Lord's wrath;

in the fire of his passion

the whole earth shall be consumed;

for a full, a terrible end

he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth. ________________________________

 

12. For three transgression of Israel

and for four, I will not revoke the punishment ...

I raised up some of your children to be prophets

and some of your youths to be

nazarites.

Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel?

says the Lord.

But you made the nazarites drink wine,

and commanded the prophets saying:"you shall not prophesy."

So, I will press you down in your place,

just as a cart presses down when it is full of sheaves. ______________________________

 

 

13. On that day, says the Lord, I will destroy the wise out of Edom,

and understanding out of Mount Esau.

Your warriors shall be shattered O Teman,

so that everyone from Mount

Esau will be cut off. ______________________________

 

 

14. Then he brought me to the gate, the gate facing east. And there, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east; the sound was like the sound of mighty waters; and the earth shone with his glory. The vision I say was like the vision that I had seen when he came to destroy the city, and like the vision that I had seen by the river Chebar; and I fell upon my face. As the glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gate facing east, the spirit lifted me up, and brought me into the inner court; and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.

___________________________

 

15. Are you not from of old,

O lord my God, my Holy One?

You shall not die.

O Lord, you have marked them for judgment;

and you, O Rock have established them for punishment.

Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,

and you cannot look on wrongdoing;

why do you look on the treacherous,

and are silent when the wicked swallow

those more righteous then they? ___________________________

 

Answer Key